Mobile Devices and Mobile Applications

05/14/2017

Snap reported quarterly financial results for its first time as a public company on Wednesday, posting revenue that missed estimates and slower-than-expected user growth.

Shares plummeted more than 20 percent on Thursday. The company spent $2 billion on stock-based compensation expenses after its initial public offering, widening net losses for the quarter to $2.2 billion.

CEO Evan Spiegel got a $750 million bonus for taking Snap public. He told analysts on a conference call that the company was focused on improving quality for users during the first quarter, especially for those with Android mobile phones.

Despite the steep loss during the quarter, Snap is "still in investment mode," the company's chief financial officer, Drew Vollero, said on a conference call with analysts.

As the company behind the viral ephemeral messaging app and Spectacles glasses, Snap's IPO was the biggest technology offering since Alibaba.

And it's growing at an extraordinary rate: Revenue rose 286 percent year over year in the first quarter. Daily active users rose 36 percent from the year-ago period, and average revenue per user grew 181 percent.

More than 3 billion Snaps were made daily in the first quarter, the company said, up from 2.5 billion in the third quarter of 2016. Users spent an average of 30 minutes a day on Snapchat, the company's chief strategist, Imran Khan, said on the conference call, and cited Nielsen data showing that many Snap users could not be reached by traditional TV channels.

Khan told CNBC.

"We made good progress this quarter improving the performance and quality of our Snapchat application, especially on Android, which has helped result in increased net user adds and engagement. We still have a lot of work to do, and are excited about the potential from continued performance improvements."

Facebook, in particular, has pushed aggressively into Snap's turf. Boss Mark Zuckerberg told analysts that Instagram Stories has 200 million daily active users, and WhatsApp Status has more than 175 million daily active users.

As a whole, Facebook has 1.28 billion daily active users, nearly eight times as many as Snapchat.

Other revenue sources, like Spectacles, have hardly made a dent in the company's business. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expect Snap to post a per-share loss through the end of 2018.

Snap has not made great gains in the markets, trading mostly below the high of $29.44 in its first week of trading. Indeed, the stock fell as low as $17.07 after hours, just 7 cents above its IPO price, as shares changed hands in heavy volume.

Snap should have set its expectations lower, Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Wunderlich Securities, told CNBC's "Closing Bell" on Wednesday. He explained that a company's first earnings report as a public company is "really dependent" on executives giving realistic guidance. But that's just part of the growing pains of becoming a public company, Hogan said.

COMMENTARY: I won't lie to you, I am not a fan of startups with unproven or unsustainable business models and no evidence of profitability. In my opinion, Snap Inc has many similarities to Twitter: 1) user growth slowing down at time of IPO filing, 2) lack of profitability and 3) small market focus (primarily Millennials). Snaps has positioned itself as a "camera app" that allows Millennials, its core user demographics, to share photos that automatically disappear.

In a blog post dated October 10, 2016, I commented on Snap Inc's proposed $25 billion IPO. Like Twitter before it, I had a lot of reservations about the Snap IPO, because there were already strong signs that user growth was slowing down, and many analysts like myself, felt that Snap's business model, which depended almost entirely on advertising, was unsustainable. Furthermore, Snap derived the majority of its ad revenue from the U.S., so in order to sustain growth, this required expanding its user base internationally.

Snap is very slow in providing advertisers with the tools they need to target potential customers, and this is the same thing that plagued Twitter's ad revenue growth. On May 4, 2017, Snap announced a suite of tools to help advertisers market to its users more effectively. If you ask me, they should've done this much sooner.

For those of you who like reading the minutes of Snap Inc's Q1 2017 earnings conference call with investors, you will find it all below:

Snapchat is opening itself up to advertisers of all sizes with new buying tools

According to an announcement on May 4, 2017, starting this June, Snap is going a step further by flinging wide its gates to advertisers of all sizes and budgets with a new suite of self-service tools. The move could help considerably grow Snap's fledgling ad business, which is expected to reach $1 billion in revenue this year.

Releasing a self-service ads manager is intended to erase any friction that may be keeping advertisers off Snapchat, a company spokesperson told Business Insider. Snap expects larger buyers to still go through one of its auction partners, which offer more custom targeting like timing ads to run alongside TV campaigns or during specific weather conditions.

Snapchat's new ads manager will let any advertiser buy, manage, and view reporting for their campaigns. All ad formats,including app install ads, sponsored geofilters, and fullscreen video, are available alongside existing targeting capabilities like goal-based bidding. The manager is free to use and requires no minimum ad spend.

A new mobile dashboard will also allow marketers to see their ads like a normal user, view analytics, and get notification updates about their campaigns directly from the Snapchat app. Over 20 brands are testing these new tools now as part of a private beta, and Snap plans to make them available to everyone in June.

05/07/2017

Facebook had another strong quarter, beating estimates to start 2017. It scored $8.03 billion in revenue and $1.04 GAAP actual EPS in Q1 compared to $0.87 EPS estimate.It earned that from 1.94 billion users, up from 1.86 billion last quarter, growing at a faster 4.3 percent compared to 3.91 perecent last quarter.

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Steady Growth, Strong Profits

At this rate Facebook should hit 2 billion total users in Q2. Daily active users reached 1.28 billion, up from 1.23 billion last quarter. While fake news, video violence, and copying Snapchat have all been fixtures of the Facebook news cycle, its user growth actually grew during the time period. Facebook added 3 million monthly users in the lucrative but saturated US & Canada market, though the Asia-Pacific region was the big driver, where Facebook added 43 million users.

The company told investors that “Facebook is no longer reporting non-GAAP expenses, income, tax rate, and earnings per share (EPS).” That means it will be more prominently disclosing stock-based compensation in its expenses, which is important since tech companies like Facebook pay employees lots of stock that vests over time to keep them from leaving.

[Correction: TechCrunch and several other publications wrongly compared the new GAAP actual EPS with the non-GAAP analyst estimate, since Facebook no longer reports non-GAAP financials. Since Facebook’s GAAP actual EPS was $1.04 compared to the analyst estimate of $0.87, Facebook actually beat the street this quarter, rather than having mixed results as we originally reported.]

Mobile now counts for 85 percent of Facebook’s ad revenue, compared to 84 percent last quarter, accounting for $6.7 billion in ad revenue. Facebook earned $3.06 billion in profit in Q1, up 76% year-over-year while revenue grew 49% year-over-year. Facebook managed to slow the decline of its games payments business, with it earning $175 million in Q1 compared to $180 million last quarter and $195 million in Q3. Facebook stopped reporting mobile-only users.

Headcount grew to 18,770 people, up 38 percent YOY. Facebook’s total costs were $4.7 billion, giving it a 41% operating margin, down from 52% margin last quarter.

Facebook’s focus on the developing world with apps like the 200 million-user Facebook Lite, recently rolled-out Messenger Lite, and new Instagram offline mode are paying off. Average revenue per user in the Rest Of World region hit $1.27, up 40% in a year.

Zuckerberg On Leapfrogging Snapchat

During the earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg gave an overview of Facebook’s work on its new mission to “build community” that the CEO described in his humanitarian manifesto in February. Progress includes getting people to join community groups, launching Community Help for organizing disaster and crisis relief, and launching Townhall to connect people to their elected representatives.

One important piece of news from the call was the first indication of the performance of WhatsApp Status, the Facebook-owned messaging app’s Snapchat Stories clone. Zuckerberg said WhatsApp Status now has 175 million daily users just 10 weeks after launch, making it larger than Snapchat as a whole.

“I think we were a little bit late to the trend initially around making cameras the center of how sharing works. But I do think at this point we’re pretty much ahead in terms of the technology that we’re building, and making an open platform I think is a big step forward. A lot of people are using these products across our family of apps. And I would expect us to continue leading the way forward on this from this point on.”

The CEO seems bullish on outside developers helping Facebook to produce a wider ranger of AR content than Snap can itself. When asked about monetizing AR, Zuckerberg brought up how object recognition could enable floating Buy buttons on real world things.

Another significant point from the call was Facebook’s growing emphasis on long-form video and purposeful viewing, rather than the short-form video people spontaneously discover in the feed today. Efforts to thwart ad blockers have also succeeded, with CFO David Wehner saying Facebook served 32% more ad impressions in Q1 2017 versus Q1 2016.

Scandals Don't Slow Facebook

eMarketer estimates that Facebook will generate $36.29 billion in net digital ad revenue in 2017, up 35% from last year. That would give it the second largest share of the global online ad market with 16.2%, behind Google’s 33%. 45% of Facebook ad revenue is expected to come from the US. While Facebook doesn’t break out Instagram financials, eMarketer expects it to earn $3.92 billion in global ad revenue, or 12.3% of Facebook’s ad revenue.

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eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson is bullish about Facebook as an advertising platform but says.

“Advertisers continue to report positive results from their ads on Facebook, but they remain concerned about things like fake news and the measurement glitches that Facebook has revealed. How the company addresses these and other concerns will be a key factor that determines whether revenue growth continues as strongly in the next few quarters and years as it has in the recent past.”

Q1 saw Facebook spin up several new products that could turn into serious money-makers for the social network. Following the success of Instagram Stories, Facebook continued its efforts to clone Snapchat with the launch of Messenger Day, Facebook Stories, and WhatsApp Status. These clones could dampen growth for Snapchat while eventually sucking in marketing dollars from the ads it will likely insert between Storiesas it does on Instagram.

But Facebook saw trouble with Oculus, paying $300 million (plus $200 million from Oculus founders) to Zenimax after losing a lawsuit about stolen intellectual property. Co-founder Palmer Luckey left the company, and Oculus reduced the price of its Rift headset amidst slow sales of tethered VR hardware across the industry.

The biggest story of the quarter was Facebook’s on-going struggles to fight fake news and offensive content. It’s begun working with outside fact checkers, hired a former New York Times product manager to run news product, made banned content reporting easier, and today announced it will hire 3000 people to speed up vetting of flagged content. Yet even that controversy hasn’t seemed to slow down the social juggernaut.

COMMENTARY: In a blog post dated May 21, 2012, I had predicted that Facebook's IPO had been over-hyped by investers in the pre-IPO secondary market, and that this could result in a further erosion in the share price, and possible share price collapse. This in fact happened, and by August 17, 2012 (see my Blog post), Facebook shares had dropped to new low of $19.87 from their IPO closing price of $38.23. I made jokes about Facebook, calling the social giant "Faceplant." It wasn't until August 23, 2013 that Facebook shares slowly creeped back to exceed their closing IPO price $38.23, by reaching $40.55. A lot of pre-IPO investors waited over nine months to recover their investments. Many investors, like yours truly, bailed out of Facebook and took a loss. I lost over $1,200 myself. I thought at the time that Facebook was one of my worse investments, and I was probably not the only one.

Facebook went into their IPO without a detailed strategy and sustainable business model for generating advertising revenues from mobile users. So the month before the IPO, Facebook acquired Instagram, a mobile photosharing app, for $1 billion. The strategy was to use Instagram as a platform for mobile advertising. However, it wasn't until Q4 2012, that Facebook was able to deliver on its promise to investors, that it could monetize mobile users. In Q4 2012, mobile ad revenues were $305 million or 23% of total ad revenues. The rest is history, of course, as Facebook now dominates all social media sites in mobile ad revenues. For the year ending December 31, 2016, mobile ad revenues constitute 84% of Facebook's $27.6 billion total ad revenues for the year 2016.

If you woul like to read the complete transcript of Facebook's Q4 2016 earnings conference call with investors, you can find it at Seeking Alpha

05/01/2017

Google Play widened its lead over iOS in worldwide downloads; however, iOS maintained its lead in worldwide consumer spend.

The first quarter of 2017 saw record levels of worldwide app downloads and consumer spend. iOS and Google Play downloads grew 15% year over year — to nearly 25 billion worldwide. This is an incredible feat since this number only reflects new downloads and is not inclusive of re-installs or cumulative downloads from past quarters.

Gross consumer spend also grew at an impressive 45% year over year in Q1 2017 to well over $15 billion across iOS and Google Play worldwide. This figure only partially represents how publishers can generate money through apps since it does not include revenue from m-commerce or in-app advertising.

The app market is soaring as consumers migrate more of their lives to mobile and pay for the ease, convenience and accessibility that apps offer.

Google Play Downloads Boom in Q1 2017

Google Play widened its lead over iOS to 135% for worldwide downloads in Q1 2017, up from a 100% lead back in Q1 2016. It saw both the greatest absolute growth and the fastest growth rate year over year out of the two stores. Google Play grew 20% year over year, fueled largely by growth in emerging markets like India and Indonesia.

India is still in the early stages of the App Market Maturity Cycle. The incredible rate of downloads the region is currently experiencing is the result of consumers trying out new apps before app habits form. Smartphone penetration in India is below 30%, which paints a rosy picture of long-term growth. As more consumers adopt smartphones, we expect India to continue to contribute significant download growth in the quarters to come.

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While Android devices dominate in India and drove Google Play downloads in Q1, India was also a chief contributor to growth in iOS downloads, second only to China. China remains a vital market for the iOS App Store, and as downloads continue to grow, consumer spend follows.

Overall, the iOS App Store saw a healthy growth rate of 5% year over year in Q1 2017; however, it’s when looking at consumer spend that the App Store’s leadership really comes into focus.

iOS Consumer Spend Grew 45% YoY in Q1 2017

iOS increased its lead to 100% in consumer spend over Google Play in Q1 2017, up from 90% in Q1 2016. It saw impressive consumer spend growth of 45% year over year in Q1 2017 along with the greatest absolute gains in consumer spend out of the two stores. Given China’s rise to the #1 country by iOS consumer spend, it’s no surprise that China was a chief contributor of growth. China saw both the greatest absolute gains in iOS consumer spend and the largest growth in market share of worldwide iOS consumer spend year over year. Our App Store Forecast predicts that China will remain the largest single market for app store spend through 2021 and is poised to hold its title as the largest single market for iOS consumer spend in the years to come.

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Google Play Consumer Spend Picked up Speed in Q1 2017

Google Play also saw strong growth — consumer spend grew 40% year over year. While emerging markets fueled much of the download growth, mature markets were the biggest contributors to growth in consumer spend. South Korea and the US saw the greatest growth in market share of worldwide Google Play consumer spend, but Japan and the US saw the largest absolute growth year over year.

While the largest contributors to growth in consumer spend on both Google Play and iOS have come from Asia and the Americas, Europe plays an integral role in driving consumer spend on both stores. The United Kingdom, Germany and France represent three of the top 10 markets for both Google Play and iOS consumer spend in Q1 2017, a trend which has held true for the past five years.

Q1 2017 saw record levels of downloads and consumer spend in the app economy, with particularly strong growth in consumer spend across both stores. With app stores showing undoubtedly healthy growth, one thing is certain: The app economy is nowhere near peaking. Apps are an integral part of consumers lives across the world. Businesses need to adapt to this mobile-first world or be left behind in this booming economy.

COMMENTARY: According to a new App Annie report released on March 29, Apple will lose its lead over Android in terms of revenue generated by mobile apps this year. However, the firm’s estimate is based on including third-party Android app stores in its forecast, not just Google Play. When the Apple App Store is pitted against Google Play alone, Apple is expected to maintain its lead through 2021, the report says.

The iOS App Store will account for a large chunk of that spend, as it’s expected to generate over $60 billion in 2021. Google Play will generate $42 billion, and third-party stores, $36 billion.

Those third-party stores – which include the Android app marketplaces offers by Tencent, Baidu, Xiaomi, Huawei, and others – accounted for $10 billion in revenue last year, and will grow to $20 billion in 2017, the report estimates.

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The market for Android apps is growing thanks in large part to mobile adoption in China as well as other emerging markets, particularly Mexico, Brazil, and Indonesia.

This will impact app downloads, too. Android downloads from both Google Play and elsewhere will at an annualized rate of 23 percent to 299.9 billion by 2012.

App downloads are more evenly distributed across countries around the world, but revenue is another matter, App Annie also found.

According to its data, the top five countries by downloads – China, India, U.S., Brazil, and Indonesia – accounted for 54 percent of the downloads last year, and this won’t change much through 2021.

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However, the top countries by revenue – China, U.S., Japan, South Korea, and U.K. – accounted for 75 percent of app store revenue in 2016. This is expected to grow to 85 percent by 2021.

The firm chalked up this shift to increased spending on games and subscriptions from existing smartphone users in mature markets like the U.S., Japan, and South Korea, but especially the maturing market that is China.

China, because of its vast population and growing middle class, still plays a key role when it comes to app store revenues, but its market is maturing, the report notes. The majority of Chinese app users are expected to settle into patterns of habitual use by 2021, which will allow revenue growth to be sustained even though downloads may slow.

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Downloads in China will grow at an annualized rate of 19 percent from 2016 to 2021, while consumer spend will grow 24 percent to $56.5 billion. In larger cities, much of the smartphone market in China is already saturated, meaning a lot of growth will come from other regions across the country.

India, on the other hand, is still in the early stages of the app market maturity cycle, and will see significant download and revenue growth through 2021. Downloads will grow 28 percent to nearly 23 billion by 2021, and app store spend will grow an annualized rate of 75 percent to $2.1 billion.

Despite India’s growth, consumer spend will be lower in the region because of a variety of factors, including more limited purchasing power and a culture that focuses more on saving versus spending on games and entertainment, App Annie says. It suggests that app developers targeting India consider other revenue models, like advertising.

Courtesy of an article dated April 26, 2017 appearing in App Annieand an article dated March 29, 2017 appearing in Tech Crunch

04/29/2017

For the first time, more than half — or 51% — of the record $72.5 billion spent on digital advertising in the U.S. last year was on mobile ads, according to a report conducted by PwC US for the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).

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First reported by The Wall Street Journal, those numbers represent a 77% surge of spending on mobile advertising to $36.6 billion last year, according to the IAB. Digital ad spending in general grew 22% in the U.S. from the previous year.

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David Doty, the IAB’s executive vice president and CMO, told WSJ.

“Brand dollars naturally follow consumers, and you’re starting to see a mobile-first, and sometimes a mobile-only mind-set among marketers.”

A big chunk of that mobile growth was driven by Facebook and Google.

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Other key findings of the report include growth in online video ads, in which spending jumped 53% to $9.1 billion. Mobile video spending grew by 145% year-over-year to nearly $4.2 billion.

Digital audio advertising crossed the $1 billion spending mark for the first time in 2016. Those figures also include ad revenue generated by streaming services and podcasts.

In February, the report found Web audiences using desktops or laptops had dipped by 14.2% compared to the same month a year ago, while mobile audiences were up 2.9%.

Interestingly, the March report from MPA revealed mobile audience decreased by 1.3%, the first report that showed even a slight decline in mobile magazine audience.

An MPA spokesperson said in an email.

“We continue to believe this flattening is due, in large part, to comScore’s methodology change initiated in Jan 2017, as well as an indication this platform is approaching saturation. There are only a handful of magazine brands that have yet to develop their mobile audiences to reportable levels.”

For the second half of 2016, Social media revenue was $9.3 billion. Year-over-year, Social media revenue was up 49% from FY 2015. Social continues its half-year growth trends - increases are reflected in the 54% compound annual growth rate of social from 2012 to 2016. Social’s growth continues to play a key role in the growth of Mobile, as Social is a significant activity on Mobile. Note: We define social media as advertising delivered on social platforms, including social networking and social gaming websites and apps, across all device types, including desktop, laptop, smartphone and tablet.

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The gap between desktop video and Mobile video is quickly closing In FY 16, mobile video revenue was 85% of desktop video revenue.

Total digital video, including mobile and desktop, rose to $9.1 billion in FY 2016, up 53% from $5.9 billion in FY 2015.

Mobile now represents just over half of internet advertising, 50.5% in 2016, up from 34.7% in 2015.

When we reallocate mobile activities to traditional formats, we note that digital video grew more than 50% from the previous year.

Display-related formats grew more than 25% 2016, when mobile revenues are included.

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2016 saw $1.1B in audio advertising revenue

In 2016, revenues from Audio advertising, particularly streaming music services, were significant enough to begin tracking within this report. Below are the FY 2016 revenue figures for desktop and mobile. Beginning in 2017, this category will be tracked for growth on desktop and mobile, with the latter being the clear revenue driver.

03/31/2017

The SamsungGalaxy S8 is the nicest phone I’ve ever held. It’s a beautiful combination of glass, metal, and an absolutely massive screen in a body that’s much smaller than you might expect.

And that might not be enough to make it stand out anymore.

There are two versions of the S8:

Standard Galaxy S8 with a 5.8-inch screen

S8 Plus with a larger 6.2-inch screen.

Both are available for preorder on March 30th and will be shipping in the US on April 21st. Pricing, as always with Samsung, is up to the carriers — but you can expect them to command a premium price. The early word is that it will start at $720.

Here's the official introduction video uploaded on YouTube on March 29, 2017:

Here’s everything we learned about these two phones after using them for an hour or two last week.

GALAXY S8 HARDWARE

Holding the S8, I’m struck by the fact that nothing about it feels especially surprising, and not just because damn near everything about it has been leaking for the past few months. The boldest feature is every phone’s more important feature: the screen. On the S8, it extends up and down to cover nearly the entire front of the phone. It also curves around the left and right, something Samsung is calling the “infinity display,” which gives it the look of not having any bezels at all. And speaking of curves, the four corners of the screen are also slightly curved instead of squared-off, which adds some elegance and perhaps some screen durability.

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The S8 and S8 Plus fulfill Samsung’s promise of fitting a big screen in a smaller body, and so they’re quite a bit more usable than other large-screened phones. I didn’t experience some of the accidental touch issues that I still get with the Galaxy S7 Edge. But I also only had about an hour with the phone, so it’s possible that it could still be an issue.

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More than anything else, the S8 is nice. It may seem like table stakes in 2017, but these phones are incredibly well-designed. There are no seams, only the barest of camera bumps, and everything seems milled down to sub-millimeter tolerances. They feel inevitable in a way that almost becomes boring. Many of the design touches are evolutions of the S7 Edge and Note 7, but refined to their Platonic ideals.

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Extending the screen to near the bottom of the phone means that there’s no room for Samsung’s traditional hardware home button. Instead, it uses software buttons like other Android phones. It also uses some haptic feedback like Apple’s iPhones to create a virtual feeling of pressing a home button, though it only works on the very specific spot where the software home button appears. One neat feature: some Android apps hide those main Android buttons when they go full screen, but you can still firmly press the bottom of the screen to activate the home button.

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Getting rid of the physical home button also means that Samsung had to move the fingerprint sensor. It’s on the back now, right next to the camera. That’s not a very convenient place for it, honestly. It’s too high up on the phone to comfortably reach and it’s also right next to the camera module, which might mean you’l be getting fingerprints on the camera more often than you’d like.

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Speaking of fingerprints, because the S8 is nearly all glass, you’ll see them on the back a lot, but they’re not as prominent as you might expect (they’re worse on the LG G6, for example).

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Both the USB-C port and the 3.5mm headphone jack (hallelujah) are located on the bottom of the phone. You have power on one side and volume buttons on the other, underneath which you’ll find a whole new button that’s dedicated to the big new software feature on the Galaxy S8, Bixby. There’s much more on Bixby below, but for now I’ll just note that dedicating a hardware button to this software feature is a big bet on Samsung’s intelligent assistant. If Bixby ends up being not that great, I expect many people will be looking for ways to remap that extra hardware button (or decrying that it’s vestigial).

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GALAXY S8 SPECS

As you’d expect, the S8 has the best specs you can get on an Android phone. Depending on the region, you’ll either get Qualcomm’s newest (and slightly rarer) Snapdragon 835 or Samsung’s own Exynos. In both cases, Samsung is touting that they’re built on a 10nm chip, which should theoretically help with power consumption. In my brief time with it, everything was whip-fast. Hopefully it will stay that way over time — Samsung phones often don’t.

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The standard S8 has a 570ppi 5.8-inch screen, with a resolution of 2960 x 1440. The S8 Plus has the exact same resolution on its 6.2-inch screen, which works out to 529ppi. For my money, the standard S8 is the way to go. It still feels like a massive screen and the body is significantly smaller. The height of the screen is interesting, too: the aspect ratio is a super-tall 18.5:9, which adds a bunch of screen real estate to scroll through. I didn’t get to test a bunch of third-party apps, so hopefully we won’t see too much weirdness with the new aspect ratio. Even if we do, Galaxy phones are popular enough to prod developers to update their apps to support it.

Nearly 900 words in and I haven’t made an exploding phone joke (you’re welcome, Samsung). But now is the time to point out that the last time the phone maker released a phone this big and beautiful, it literally set itself on fire on a disturbingly regular basis. The company’s responses to this issue were botched and bad for some time before it pivoted, apologized, and introduced a new process for checking battery safety. Those safety checks are important, but Samsung still has to own all the exploding phone jokes and hear them at every mention of its phones for a while.

So on the S8, Samsung did not push the envelope when it comes to capacity. The S8 has a 3,000mAh battery and the S8 Plus has a larger 3,500mAh battery — the same capacity that the Note 7 had. But neither is especially large when you consider the fact that they need to power towering screens. Samsung claims it has tweaked the battery chemistry to help the batteries last longer after a year or two of use.

To make up for it, Samsung is offering the usual suite of power options: Qualcomm Quick Charge and support for both major wireless charging standards. But I still have reservations about how long the batteries will last on these phones. In fact, it may be a reason to seriously consider getting the larger S8 Plus.

GALAXY S8 CAMERAS

Another place where Samsung hasn’t really pushed the envelope is the camera. The S8 uses the exact same rear camera as the Galaxy S7, a 12-megapixel sensor with OIS. Samsung says it’s done work on the software side to improve picture quality, and in my short time with it I found it to be significantly faster than the camera on the Galaxy S7 Edge.

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It is notable that the S8 Plus doesn’t get a better camera or a dual-camera setup. Excepting screen and battery size, both phones are identical.

I suspect it’s using the “take pictures all the time in the background and just save them when you hit the shutter button” trick we’ve seen on other phones. It also borrows another trick from other Android phones: the shortcut to launch it is double-pressing the power button now (since the home button is virtual).

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The front-facing camera (aka the one you really care about) has gotten an upgrade. It’s an 8-megapixel sensor now, but more importantly it has autofocus. Switching between cameras was fast and easy, as was swiping over to get to Samsung’s kajillion photo gimmick settings. But some of those gimmicks are pretty neat, I’m especially fond of the GIF mode, though I do wish it was just automatic like you can do with Apple’s Live Photos and the Motion Stills app.

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In any case, the competition for the “best smartphone camera” is way more interesting now than it was a year ago, when just Samsung and Apple were at the top. Now, Apple and LG are sticking multiple cameras in their phones while Google’s Pixel has jumped to the top of the Android camera quality game. It’s too early to say that Samsung is resting on its photography laurels with the S8, but it is fair to say that there’s probably nothing here that will give other companies reason to worry.

GALAXY S8 SOFTWARE

That Samsung is capable of making great hardware should come as no surprise to anybody. It’s the software where we have reason to be skeptical. Running all the way back to the bad old days of TouchWiz, Samsung has a well-earned reputation for taking Android and mucking it up with bad ideas.

For the past few years, though, the common refrain has been restraint, and I’m going to repeat it again today. Samsung has done a pretty good job keeping its worst instincts in check. There are a ton of weird features to find in the dark recesses of the settings menu, but out of the box the basic look, feel, and functionality of Samsung’s Android skinning is pretty good.

And there are some genuinely great parts, too. The iris scanning that lived all-too-briefly on the Note 7 is back, if you’d like to unlock your phone that way. But the best way to unlock the phone is Samsung’s new face detect system. It takes about 20 seconds to set up and once you do, it works really well. It’s not the same, bad face unlock that was introduced in Android years ago, it’s an entirely new system Samsung made.

In my 10 minutes or so of playing with it, it didn’t fail to unlock a single time. In fact, it was so fast that we a hard time filming it. I had to point the phone away from my face and then just tilt it up to look at myself. I unfortunately forgot to print a glossy 8 x 10 of my face to test with, though, so I can’t say if maybe it’s tuned to be a little too forgiving when it tries to see if it’s you. Samsung admits the face-detect system is less secure than the other ways of unlocking, so you will still need to set up the iris or fingerprint scanners to make payments.

There is one gimmick that in theory I should be excited about but in practice I’m just not: DeX. It’s a feature where, after buying a specialized dock, you can plug your Galaxy S8 into a monitor, keyboard, and mouse and get a full desktop mode. Unlike solutions we’ve seen in the past (RIP Motorola Atrix), the desktop mode here simply offers Android apps instead of a full desktop browser. It looks well-designed for what it is, offering full access to your notifications and resizable windows. But it can’t escape the fact that outside a few apps like Samsung’s own browser, Microsoft Office, and Adobe’s creative suite, Android apps are bad on big screens.

People who unironically call themselves Road Warriors like they’re IT managers in 1999 will love it. The rest of us probably won’t use it. And that’s fine.

GALAXY BIXBY PERSONAL ASSISTANT

Samsung may not have put a ton of effort in changing its hardware design language, updating its camera, or packing in a bigger battery. But it has been focused on figuring out how to make software that people actually like, and it’s all centered on a new virtual assistant called Bixby.

As I mentioned above, Bixby is launched by pressing an honest-to-god dedicated physical button. It has basically three modes:

A short-press of the button takes you to Bixby Home (you can also swipe over to it from the home screen).

Long-pressing the button turns on Bixby’s voice features.

There’s a small button on the camera app for Bixby’s augmented reality features.

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Let’s start in the middle with voice, because speaking to Bixby is the most interesting and challenging set of features here. Essentially, what Samsung is trying to do is create a new kind of virtual assistant, one that helps you use the device directly in your hands rather than ask random questions from the cloud.

I wasn’t able to test this myself, unfortunately, but Samsung did run us through a couple demos. In one, you can open the gallery app and then issue voice commands for editing a photo rather than trying to dig through the interface to find the right button. “Bixby, rotate this photo left,” and “Bixby, send this photo to Dan.” If you live that Samsung Life, you can use Bixby to send videos to your TV or turn off your smart lights, too.

The goal is that “anything you can control with touch, you can also control with voice.” It’s a laudable goal, but it’s also one I very seriously doubt Samsung can achieve. For one thing, it only works with about 10 Samsung apps at launch. Also, it can only work with apps that are written to support Bixby. Unlike Google Now on Tap, Bixby doesn’t do any screen reading to try and guess what’s on the screen. So it might be a virtual assistant, but it’s very far from an artificial intelligence.

The other big question with Bixby is how exactly is it differentiated from the Google Assistant. It seems pretty clear, but then you discover that there’s a bunch of overlap. For example, you can do things like set alarms with Bixby. There’s also Bixby Home, which so far as I can tell is a giant, random set of information cards for things like your smart light bulbs, fitness data, local news and weather, and whatever else Samsung thinks belongs in a virtual assistant home screen. It looks like every widget screen you’ve ever seen on a phone, which is to say it looks like sort of a mess that you probably won’t use very much.

Last but certainly not least are Bixby’s camera features, which are Bixby’s best features. You can launch it either directly in the camera app or from Bixby Home, and what it essentially does is turn your camera into a photo search machine. Point the Bixby camera app at anything and it will identify it and suggest web searches for it. I tried on flowers and it gave me options to buy flowers on Amazon or look at more flowers on Pinterest. It wasn’t able to precisely identify my Android Wear watch, but it did know it was a round watch and offered to let me buy a real one on Amazon.

It also works with more prosaic things. Samsung ran a demo with wine labels and book covers, both easily identified and given options to buy. Samsung says it’s working with specific partners for Bixby — including Amazon and Pinterest — but it doesn’t appear that it works with the biggest search engine of them all, Google. That’s not really a surprise.

GALAXY S8 RELEASE DATE, COLORS AND PRICE

In the US, the S8 and S8 Plus will come in black, gray, and silver. Gold and blue are options internationally.

The Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus are available for preorder starting tomorrow, March 30th, and you should get a free Oculus headset with a controller and a set of games along with your preorder. The official release in the US is on April 21st. Unfortunately, Samsung won’t confirm pricing, leaving that to its carrier partners — again, it looks like it’ll start at around $720.

COMMENTARY: I was so impressed with the new Samsung Galaxy S8, that I pre-ordered a Galaxy S8 Plus on Thursday, March 30. T-Mobile, my wireless carrier, is running a special promotion, offering a FREE pair of Samsung VR goggles with each new phone ordered, while supply lasts. This is my fourth Samsung Galaxy phone, and I see no reason to change handsets. I hope I made the right choice.

10/10/2016

Snap, Inc. is reportedly preparing an IPO that will value the company formerly known as Snapchat at around $25 billion.

The social darling is shooting for a March offering, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing sources. A company representative declined to comment on the report, on Thursday.

Standing in stark contrast to struggling social networks like Twitter, Snapchat is presently making more money than it can count.

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Indeed, despite direct competition from Facebook and other tech giants, the company is positioned for “explosive” growth in ad revenue over the next few years, according to a recent forecast from eMarketer.

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The research predicts that the playful messaging app will generate $366.69 million in ad revenues this year.

That figure is expected to jump to $935.46 million, next year.

Cathy Boyle, principal analyst at eMarketer, recently said Snapchat’s bright outlook has everything to do with its young user base. Boyl notes in a report.

“Advertisers are attracted to Snapchat for its broad reach among young Millennials and those in Generation Z, which are valuable demographic groups for many businesses.”

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To its credit, Snapchat has also tailored its ad strategy specifically for this easy-to-alienate demographic.

According to Boyle.

“To engage those often hard-to-reach consumers, Snapchat has expanded its advertising portfolio over the past year to include a wider array of video ads and more sponsored geo-filters and sponsored lenses.”

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Stateside, Snapchat’s Discover feature generates 43% of ad revenue, which is its largest single share, according to eMarketer.

Next year, however, the research firm expects Stories to overtakes Discover as the dominant ad revenue source -- by generating 37.8% of the company’s domestic ad revenue.

Having launched its ad platform in mid-2015, Snapchat still only captures 2.3% of social-networking dollars, eMarketer estimates. That’s despite the fact that it now commands 36% of the market in terms of domestic users.

Approaching its would-be IPO, Snapchat continues to experiment with new categories.

Bounding into hardware and physical fashion, the company recently unveiledSpectacles -- stylish video-recording sunglasses that are expected to retail for $130.

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Set to hit shelves later this fall, the shades can record 10-second video snippets, which are designed to approximate one’s natural field of vision. That's thanks to a 115-degree lens, which records circular video. If Spectacles are well received, Snapchat would become the first company to convince consumers to wear connected gadgets on their face.

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Google notoriously spent millions of dollars in development and marketing dollars, before giving up on its Glass initiative. Yet Snapchat -- which just rebranded itself as Snap, Inc. -- seems to have learned a few things from Google's failure.

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Spectacles’ $130 price tag is far more reasonable than the $1,500 that Google tried to charge people for Glass. Snapchat’s glasses are also being sold as a single-purpose device, which is historically much easier to market.

like Google, Snapchat currently enjoys a strong bond with young consumers -- the ideal demographic for starting trends and popularizing products.

Although bold, Snapchat’s move into hardware should not come as a complete surprise to industry watchers. The social darling recently joined the industry group that runs the Bluetooth wireless standard, which followed several hires and smallish acquisitions in the arena of consumer electronics.

COMMENTARY: I have to confess that I have not followed or even taken the time to use and evaluate Snapchat because I am most definitely not in their demographics. The idea of posting photos that dematerialize is something that just does not interest me. I ask the question: Why do I need this? I could not bring myself to come to a practical answer. On the other hand, I wasn't in Facebook's demographics either, but now everybody seems to be using the social giant site to connect and engage with users throughout the world.

Now comes the news that Snapchat is coming out with Spectacles, their first foray into cnsumer electronics. Didn't Snapchat's founders realize how intrusive taking someone else's picture without their permission can be? Google found this out when they introduced Google Glass, their augmented reality glasses. The cost for a pair of Google Glass was also prohibitively expensive. Maybe Snapchat will have better luck. Millennials are pretty impulsive, and love trying the latest in consumer electronics devices. They make the lions share of early adopters. The price is just right for Millennials, who are strapped for cash and carry a lot of debt, mostly from student loans. The glasses look "retro cool," but they don't rock my world from a designer standpoint. On the other hand, Spectacles differentiate the company from Instagram and Twitter's Vine and Periscope which also allow users to exchange video content via mobile devices. However, it still comes down to a sustainable business model, and Snapchat only began running ads in mid-2015. In my opinion, this is not a very long time to prove the sustainability of their business model.

The big news of the day is that Snapchat is planning a $25 billion IPO. I smell another Twitter IPO in the making. A startup that just began making money from ads in md-2015 is not reliable proof of a sustainable business model. Snapchat relies exclusively on Millennials, and that market although large, and soon to be the largest demographic segment in the US, is not broad or mainstream like Twitter or Facebook. Another question: How profitable is Snapchat? If they are anything like Twitter at this stage of their development, they are probably not profitable. Both Twitter and LinkedIn (recently acquired by Microsoft) were never profitable, so I would be very cautious about investing in a startup with such a narrow demographic focus.

I am dying to review Snapchat's S-1 filing. It should help answer a lot of investor concerns, and validate my own suspicions and doubts.

04/07/2016

App Annie just released its "2015 Gaming Report" and gaming on mobile devices widened its lead over other platforms in terms of spend, comprising 40% of all consumer spending on games for the year 2015. The reports key findings are summarized below.

Key Themes & Takeaways: Gaming Trends

Mobile gaming overtook both home game consoles and combined PC and Mac gaming in consumer spend for the first time in 2014; the gap widened in 2015 and shows no signs of slowing.

Games continued to have the majority share of worldwide consumer spending on both Google Play and the iOS App Store, with each store seeing incremental year-over-year gains in gaming-related share of consumer spending.

Home game console spending was disproportionately high in North America and Western Europe. Mobile game and PC and Mac game spending was centered in Asia-Pacific and shifted further in that direction in 2015. Asia-Pacific in particular saw explosive growth in share of consumer spending on the iOS App Store.

The top revenue-generating titles on mobile were actually more stable year-over-year than those on handheld game consoles (partly due to handheld games being sold in physical packaging).

Home and handheld game consoles declined marginally in consumer spend from 2013 to 2015.

Home game consoles saw the highest consumer spend per device in 2015 at nearly 5x that of mobile games. However, given their broad appeal, mobile games have a much larger user base and therefore monetize higher overall.

Worldwide Consumer Spending on Games by Device for the Years 2013-2015

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Mobile gaming overtook both home game consoles and combined PC and Mac gaming for the first time with the highest consumer spend in 2014.

Mobile gaming’s lead continued to widen in 2015 over PC and Mac gaming, home game consoles and handheld game consoles.

Worldwide Consumer Spending Shares on Games, by Region, 2015

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Asia-Pacific gained in share of game spending for iOS App Store and Google Play combined due to iOS’ explosive growth in China and the healthy growth of all major APAC markets.

Asia-Pacific also gained in share of consumer spending for both handheld games and PC and Mac gaming.

Home consoles didn’t see much growth in Asia-Pacific despite the 14 year ban on consoles in China being lifted in 2015. Western Europe showed growth in home game console spending in 2015.

Top 5 Worldwide Grossing Portable Games, by Platform, 2015

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Worldwide Game Spending Per Gaming Device, 2015

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Home game consoles far and away led other gaming mediums in consumer spend per device.

Mobile gaming saw the smallest consumer spending per device, but had the largest gaming base, reaching not only core gamers but also a significant amount of casual gamers who may not otherwise play games.

Key Themes & Takeaways: US Gamers

There was practically an even gender split within both the mobile gaming (Android Phone and iPhone gamers) and PC and Mac gaming communities in the US in 3Q 2015. Related games represent a great opportunity for marketers to reach both male and female customers.

In 3Q 2015, PC and Mac gamers skewed toward those aged 45+, handheld and console gamers skewed towards those aged 13–24, and mobile was more evenly distributed with the largest age bracket being 25–44.

Android phones trailed significantly behind the other gaming platforms in typical hours of gameplay per week. (Such gamers spent less than one-third the time of those on home game consoles, handheld consoles and combined PC and Mac.)

Appealing to a broader user base, which includes non-traditional and casual gamers, US Android Phone gamers played less time per person per week. Gamers on other devices had much higher weekly gameplay hours per person.

US Gaming Device Demographics, by Gender, 3Q 2015

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Males and females were represented evenly among US iPhone and Android Phone gamers and combined PC and Mac gamers.

US home console gamers skewed male (approximately 59%) in 3Q 2015.

Handheld game consoles in the US skewed the strongest female (approximately 53%) in 3Q 2015.

US Gaming Device Demographics, by Age, 3Q 2015

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PC and Mac gaming skewed older than other US gaming devices in 3Q15 with about 59% aged 45+.

Handheld game consoles had the largest share of young American gamers at 36%+ under 24 years old in 3Q 2015.

US mobile gamers were strongest in the 25–44-year-old bracket at about 40%.

US Gaming Device Demographics, by Hours of Gameplay Per Person, 3Q 2015

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US Android Phone gamers played less than 3 hours per week on average in 3Q 2015. (This mobile gaming community is larger and includes a significantly higher share of casual gamers.)

41% of PC and Mac gamers played less than 5 hours per week versus 22% on consoles.

14% of PC and Mac gamers played greater than 20 hours per week versus 8% on consoles.

Key Themes & Takeaways: Wrap-Up

Mobile gaming surpassed both home game console and PC and Mac gaming to become the top global platform by consumer spending in 2014, furthering this lead over other gaming devices in 2015. Mobile gaming grew to over 40% of total consumer spend on games last year, up from about 35% in 2014.

More than 80% of combined iOS and Google Play consumer app spending in 2015 was derived from games, which enjoyed significant spending growth. On iOS, this share topped 75% in the second half of 2015.

The Asia-Pacific region saw the greatest growth in share of game consumer spending worldwide on iOS and Google Play app stores, handheld gaming, and combined PC and Mac gaming, a testament to the cultural gaming tradition of many countries in the region as well as the ongoing expansion of China as an increasingly large and viable market for game monetization.

Home console gaming saw more than double the consumer spend per device than any other gaming platform. Mobile gaming saw the lowest consumer spend per device, but had the largest audience, giving it the highest overall consumer spend in 2015.

In the US, there is a significant opportunity across all platforms to attract male and female gamers. Console gamers skewed decidedly male. Android Phone and iPhone along with PC and Mac gaming represented near-even gender divides for gamers.

Across handheld, PC and Mac and home console games, users spend roughly the same amount of time per week playing games on average.

PC and Mac gamers have much more variance in the amount of typical gameplay per week compared to home console gamers, with almost double the size of the user base at both extremes (less than 5 hours per week and greater than 20 hours per week).

Hours of gameplay per user per week on Android phones was significantly lower than other gaming platforms, a result of the wide appeal and broadened user base from casual gamers.

Courtesy of an article dated March 29, 2016 appearing in App Annie Blog

12/13/2015

There's currently no better way to get started with virtual reality.

When Samsung and Oculus debuted their Gear VR headset almost a year ago, the companies made it clear the device wasn't yet ready for the masses. Billed as "Innovator Edition" models, the original Gear VRs were intended mainly for early adopters. They only fitted a limited number of phones -- the original was designed just for the Note 4; the second for the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge -- and were also quite pricey at $200 per headset.

Beginning November 10, 2015, Samsung began taking pre-orders of their new Samsung Gear VR headset through Amazon.com, BestBuy.com, and Samsung.com. On November 20, 2015, Samsung and Oculus released the first-ever consumer-ready version of the Gear VR for shipment. The new Samsung Gear VR headset is smaller, lighter, cheaper (only $99) and is compatible with more phones (the Note 5, S6, S6 Edge and S6 Edge+). But, more importantly, its content library has exploded, with more VR apps and games than ever before. Virtual reality has finally gone mainstream, and there's no better way to get started than with the new Gear VR.

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Summary

Samsung's Gear VR is the company's first virtual reality headset designed for everyday consumers. For just $99 and a compatible Samsung phone, you can dive into an incredible experience that'll have you watching 360-degree movies and playing super immersive games. Yes, it only works with a limited number of phones, but right now, there's no better option if you want to give VR a try.

Samsung never made any pretensions that the Gear VR would be small and portable -- it's always been a rather large headset that looks like you have a giant pair of ski goggles strapped on your face. But every iteration of the Gear VR has been more lightweight than the last, and the new consumer-ready version is no exception. Samsung says it's about 19 percent lighter, and I definitely feel it. The previous models had chunky white plastic around the head straps while the current model has none. This not only reduces the headset's overall weight, but makes it far less cumbersome to put on. All you do is strap the headset to your head with a couple of elasticized Velcro straps -- one around the back of your head and the other around the top -- and you're ready to go. The top strap is technically optional, but I liked having it on for a more secure fit.

The fit, by the way, is pretty excellent. The soft foam padding around the eyes and the nose bridge makes the fit very comfortable (My discomfort came from nausea instead; more on that later). Another upside is that new Gear VR also easily accommodates most glasses -- I was able to wear mine without too much shifting around. That said, if you have a relatively lightweight prescription, you might want to go without your glasses entirely for additional comfort. Plus, the Gear VR has a focus wheel at the top so you can easily adjust the focus to match your eyesight.

Like all the previous Gear VRs, the new model is not a standalone headset -- it's essentially a VR viewer for your phone; sort of a fancier version of Google's Cardboard, if you will. Except that unlike Cardboard, the Gear VR has additional hardware -- an accelerometer, a gyroscope and proximity-based sensors -- on board to reduce latency and increase the performance overall.

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To get started, you'll have to snap the phone onto the front of the Gear VR so that the display faces the headset's stereoscopic lenses. Simply dock the phone into a micro-USB dock on the left and then lock it in place with a plastic holder on the right. At least for now, the Gear VR is compatible with four different Samsung phones: the Galaxy S6, the S6 Edge, the S6 Edge+ and the Note 5. Since the latter two phones are slightly larger than the others, the Gear VR has a toggle that you can use to slide the micro-USB dock to the left or right to accommodate the different sizes. Though it seems like the headset's use is limited to just these four phones, Samsung told us that it's highly likely the current Gear VR could be compatible with future Samsung phones too.

By default, controls are relegated to the four-way directional touchpad on your right temple. It's much more contoured than previous Gear VR models plus there's a raised center nub, which makes the whole thing far easier to use -- you can just feel your way around to figure out the controls. Above the touchpad is a back button, which has been relocated slightly to the right for easier accessibility, while a volume rocker is located to the front.

Though it's not included with the Gear VR, I also recommend you wear a pair of headphones with it, as it'll make your VR experience more immersive. There are also a few games that would benefit from the use of a dedicated gamepad controller (again, this isn't included with the headset), which you can connect to the phone via Bluetooth.

Hand-On Test

I tested the Gear VR with a Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge+. Setup was pretty easy; once you have the phone loaded into the headset, you're pretty much ready to go. As soon as it docks into place, the handset will automatically launch Oculus Home, a VR content portal from where you can launch a variety of apps, movies or games (if you don't have the Oculus app installed, it'll prompt you to do so). Virtual reality content has exploded in the past year, and nowhere is this more evident than the variety available on the Oculus Store -- Samsung and Oculus tells us there are already more than a 100 apps and games on board, with even more coming down the pipeline.

Before we delve into the content, let's talk about the display quality. In short, it's not great. Since you're essentially pressing the phone's screen up to your face, there's definitely a slight "screen door effect" where you can spot individual pixels. This effect seems a lot more reduced than previous Gear VR headsets, but it was still noticeable. As a result, videos looked pretty pixilated and games just didn't look as sharp as I would like. Of course, a lot of this is dependent on the phone's display -- the S6 Edge+ has a very good 1440 x 2560 Quad HD resolution, but even that didn't prove sharp enough when magnified with the Gear VR's lenses. I'll admit to brushing aside the need for phones with 4K displays, but perhaps there's a real benefit if you plan to use them with VR headsets.

That said, once I started really playing around with the content, I found myself casting those display quibbles aside. Viewing 360-degree video of an ocean landscape was wonderfully serene and peaceful, and I also enjoyed watching episodes of Doctor Who on Netflix as if I were in movie theater. Playing games was especially delightful: Shooting at incoming drones in EVE:Gunjack and flying around on a jetpack in Omega Agent was fun and engaging. Being able to look around you to home in on enemy targets feels a lot more interactive than just waggling a thumbstick.

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My favorite game by far, however, is Land's End, a puzzle game akin toMyst or Monument Valley. Set on a rocky island, you solve puzzles by staring at dots to illuminate them, tracing a line from dot to dot in order to unlock a path. The immersive VR environment coupled with the game's tranquil soundtrack makes this one of the more meditative games I've ever come across. Note: I recommend using a swivel chair to play some of these games so that you don't suffer from too much neck strain.

As much as I was having fun however, I found that I could not wear the Gear VR for very long periods of time. That's because it does make me feel a bit nauseous; I had to take the headset off every half hour or so to stop my head from spinning. Of course, your mileage may vary here, but it's worth the warning. I happen to be one of those people who suffers from motion sickness on boats and while traveling down windy roads, so I'm perhaps more susceptible to this kind of thing.

Another thing to watch out for is battery life. After a solid hour of VR time, the phone's battery dropped by as much as 20 percent. After four or five hours, the phone was nearly dead. Also beware if you do want to keep the phone in VR mode for very long, as it does occasionally get hot enough to overheat.

The Competition

If you just wanted to get your feet wet with virtual reality, Google's Cardboard is not a bad start. After all, it costs close to nothing and it's dead easy to set up. The downsides, of course, is that it doesn't offer nearly the same degree of sophistication and immersion that the Gear VR does. The Gear VR has straps so you can wear it for hours on end, additional on-board sensors to reduce latency, plus it has a dedicated touchpad for greater control. At the end of the day, Google Cardboard is just, well, cardboard, while Samsung's Gear VR is a full-fledged dive into virtual reality.

The Google Cardboard VR headset is available through Amazon for under $20.00 (Click Image To Enlarge)

Then again, Gear VR's performance doesn't quite compare to more advanced VR headsets like the Oculus Rift, the PlayStation VR and the HTC Vive. For one thing, Samsung's Gear VR doesn't have positional head tracking, so you can't do things like duck behind walls or bend your head down to take a closer look at something on the ground. The other headsets also promise to be far more powerful -- the Rift and the Vive will be powered by high-end gaming rigs while the Playstation VR will harness the computational prowess of the PS4. That should lead to a higher fidelity experience with better graphics and better physics -- features that even the best smartphone won't be able to match.

Oculus Rift VR headset is designed for professional VR developers. The headset and Oculus' software developers kit (SDK) is available on Amazon for $1,275.00 (Click Image To Enlarge)

Yet, those other systems aren't even available to the public yet. Plus, they promise to be much more expensive. Though the prices aren't official just yet, rumor is that they'll cost at least $300 each. And that doesn't even include the cost of a high-end gaming PC, which could be well over $1,000. If you plan on going with the Playstation VR, a PS4 isn't cheap either, retailing at around $350. Even if you were to buy a Gear VR along with a compatible Samsung phone, that would only run around $500 to $700 if you get your phone off-contract. Additionally, all three rival headsets need to be tethered to their source computer, which limits your movements when playing games. The $99 Gear VR, on the other hand, is completely mobile, letting you swivel around on your chair or take it anywhere.

Sony's Project Morpheus is now called PlayStation VR and has a vague release date of Q1 2016, but Sony has not announced a price (Click Image To Enlarge)

The HTC Vive VR headset was designed for professional VR developers and will be available for pre-ordering in February 2016 with shipments in April 2016. No prices have been announced (Click Image To Enlarge)

Closing Statements

If Google Cardboard gives a taste of virtual reality, Samsung's Gear VR offers up a whole feast. With just the addition of a smartphone, you can get a truly immersive VR headset that lets you travel distant lands, watch movies and shoot up spaceships in alien worlds. It's comfortable to wear for hours at a time -- even if you wear glasses -- and controls are intuitive and easy to understand. Yes, it's only compatible with Samsung's latest handsets and no, it's not quite as advanced as headsets like the Oculus Rift. But at only $99, Samsung's Gear VR still makes for a great entry-level VR headset for the everyday consumer. If you already have a compatible Samsung phone, it's a no-brainer.

COMMENTARY: If you haven't already done so, I urge you to read my blog post of September 24, 2015, when Facebook and Samsung announced the Samsung Gear VR headset at the Oculus Connect 2 Developers Conference.

With Gear VR, Samsung gets to be the first to push VR hardware out to the mainstream and it serves as a lure to bring brand-new Galaxy owners in. The company is putting itself at the tip of a sector that; according to SuperData's Stephanie Llamas, will drive the bulk of VR sales at first.

The mobile slice of the VR sector is forecasted to generate nearly $1 billion in revenues by the end of 2016 and fatten to about $4.4 billion by the close of 2019, according to SuperData Researcher's preliminary study into the nascent market.

The big lure for early adopters is the very affordable price of $99.00. This pricing strategy appears to have worked with both BestBuy and Amazon reporting that they are out-of-stock, but are taking back orders for delivery at a future date. If you already own a Samsung Galaxy S6, S6 Edge, S6 Edge+ or Note 5 you are good to go, but first you must download the Oculus VR software. Once installed, you will be able to run over 100+ (and growing) VR apps designed for the headset.

I haven't tried the Samsung Gear VR headset yet, but Amazon claims the headset is a No 1 best seller and owners have given it an average review rating of 4.5 stars. 65% of owners have given it a 5 star rating. The biggest complaint from Amazon owners has been the video quality which depends on the resolution of your Samsung phone. Owners are also reporting that the headset is a huge drain on your phone's battery, can cause your phone to overheat, and you may experience eye fatigue if you use the headset several hours. All users loved the low price and highly emersive VR experience.

Some Altenatives

If you are still hesitant to dive in and buy the Samsung Gear VR headset, there are several lower-priced alternatives (yes, there are) you may wish to consider. All of these fall into the "starter" category and are a great way to experience virtual reality on the cheap.

Google Cardboard VR is a starter headset made of cardboard that sells for $12.98 on Amazon. Owners called the Google Cardboard VR headset "simple, fun and affordable." To use the headset you need to download the free Cardboard app from Google Play. According to Google Play, the Cardboard app has been reviewed by nearly 69,000 owners and has received an average user review of 4.2 stars (out of 5). The Google Cardboard VR headset will accommodate phones with displays up to 6-inches in size and running Android OS 4.1 or higher. Google Play claims between 1-5 million Cardboard app downloads. Amazon says they are temporarily out-of-stock, but the site says they will have more on December 19, 2015. Hypergrid Business published a list of 22 online sites where you can buy Google Cardboard VR. Google Cardboard is also available through Walmart and BestBuy, but you will pay a bit more. The Google Cardboard VR head garnered a review of 4 stars on Google Play. 74% of owners gave it 5 stars.

View-Master VR Starter Pack - Is compatible with and uses the Google Cardboard app (see above). The Starter Pack includes one View-Master viewer, one Preview Reel, one adapter for the iPhone 5, iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s and a user guide. The Preview Reel included with the Starter Pack allows you to sample View-Master VR apps, such as Space, Destinations and National Geographic: Wildlife. You can fully explore these exotic new worlds by purchasing View-Master VR Experience Packs (sold separately). Reviews averaged 4 stars from Amazon users. Available at Amazon, Target, Toys R US, Barnes & Noble and Walmart. $24.99 to $29.99.

FIVESUNG 3D VR headset - This is a knock-off of the Google Cardboard VR viewer, but made of plastic. Reviews are all over the place. Reviews averaged 3 stars from Amazon users. Available at Amazon and owner reviews were mixed averaging 3.8 stars (out of 5). Price: $19.99.

Courtesy of an article dated November 15, 2015 appearing in Engadget, an article dated November 20, 2015 appearing in CNN Money, an article dated October 28, 2015 appearing in Wearable, an article dated December 12, 2015 appearing in Tech Times, an article dated November 23, 2015 appearing in Tech Times, and an article dated August 10, 2014 appearing in Hypergrid Business

12/07/2015

Two years ago, Twitter-owned Vine was growing like kudzu. It was widely embraced by both consumers and marketers who sought to push the envelope with creative six-second clips. But the explosion of new video formats on Facebook, Snapchat and YouTube, which all now boast sizable scale, has caused top brands to quietly slip away. Tyler Hissey, senior digital strategist at Hill Holliday, explained.

"Over time, it became difficult for many marketers to achieve scale [on Vine]. In the last six months or so, brands have started to de-emphasize Vine as a channel because of the targeting capabilities on all these other platforms."

Data is proving this out. Video analytics firm Tubular Labs reviewed Vine, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube accounts of 40 major brands, including Coca-Cola, Target and Dunkin' Donuts. Between September and November, marketers posted 2,500 social videos, and Vine contributed just 113 of those clips—equivalent to 4 percent of branded content.

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Only 13 of the 40 brands posted to Vine during the third quarter of 2015, down from 21 in the first quarter of this year, Tubular found.

General Electric—renowned in marketing circles as an early adopter of new platforms—hasn't posted to Vine since last January, while social-savvy Mountain Dew's account doesn't appear to have been touched since April.

Tubular Labs co-founder Allison Stern said.

"I assume that brands are having this platform fatigue. Marketers today are savvy about experimenting on a platform, but if it's not working for them, they're going to drop it."

One of the main reasons brands are turning away from Vine is because unlike its competitors, Vine doesn't have an advertising model, although brands often buy Twitter ads to promote their clips, noted Topher Burns, group director of distribution at Deep Focus.

Burns said.

"In terms of a distribution channel, Vine fails in comparison to what we'd expect from the other three [platforms]."

All that said, Vine still shines when social stars are involved. Instead of brands posting their own content, Burns said that clients are looking to team up with top influencers who have amassed massive followings to create sponsored content.

For example, when Dunkin' Donuts recently sought to promote its mobile app, it tapped social media star Logan Paul to create funny sponsored Vine and Instagram posts around its stores. The coffee seller used Twitter to push Paul's goofy clip, which shows him throwing a box of donuts in the air and has accumulated more than 3 million loops—Vine's view metric—in the past month.

Tom Buontempo, president of Attention, agreed that influencers boost branded content on Vine, but noted that his shop is getting more Snapchat work as social media stars look to build audiences across multiple platforms.

He said.

"Like a media property, they're looking to expand their footprint as much as they can. We're doing more Snapchat campaigns through influencers than we are for any other platform right now."

Still other agency execs contend that Vine's problems stem from Twitter's sales pitch. Twitter is beefing up its advertising offerings for brands with new native video formats, livestreaming app Periscope and Niche—a platform that connects brands with creators—but Vine is often treated as an afterthought.

Mark Book, vp, director of Digitas Studios said.

"It seems to be a bit on the back burner as of late. It is incredibly challenging to weave a brand or product narrative into a piece of content in six seconds. We have seen success with stop-motion and live events that tell a larger, real-time story, but those opportunities are few and far between."

COMMENTARY: I think that this survey was too small to draw any conclusions concerning Vine's adoption by major brands, but there are other important reasons why brands aren't using Vine or Periscope as advertising platforms. Twitter does not view Vine as a competitor to Facebook which has been highly successful with its video ads. Vine has its eyes set on becoming less of a social network and more of an entertainment platform. Speaking with Re/Code, Vine’s product manager, Jason Toff said,

“When Vine started it was a social network. But what we’ve found…is that the way people are most successful using Vine is as an entertainment network. So if you look at the product releases we’ve focused on, you’ll notice that there’s a trend toward this entertainment aspect.”

According to AdAge, Twitter's plan to make money from Vine and Periscope looks a lot different from the strategy it's pursuing with its core product.

Neither video platform will feature traditional, force-fed advertising, at least in the near term, according to Joel Lunenfeld, Twitter's VP-global brand strategy. Instead, Twitter is working with brands to promote content from these platforms within its core product, and serving as a middleman between brands and stars with major social followings.

Mr. Lunenfeld said at the Collision tech conference in Las Vegas in May 2015.

"As of right now we don't have plans for promoted Vines or promoted Periscopes."

For now, that means Twitter will likely lean heavily on Niche, a company that connects brands with social media all-stars. Twitter acquired Niche in February for a reported $30 million. Niche, Mr. Lunenfeld said, has relationships with 10,000 social media "creators" and is especially well connected on Vine.

Twitter makes money from Vine, a personality-driven platform, by connecting brands with talent. Those stars, who command massive followings, then create branded content on the platform. Brittany Furlan, one such star, is followed by 9.1 million people, for instance. Nash Grier, another star, is followed by 11.6 million people.

Mr. Lunenfeld said.

"A brand or an ad agency comes to us and says, 'I'm launching a new product; it's targeted to this audience.' We'll say, 'Okay, here's 15 people [and] five of them, alone, have a combined audience bigger than BuzzFeed.'"

HP, in one case, used Niche to find talent to create ten Vines promoting the launch of a convertible laptop. The Vines were so engaging, Mr. Lunenfeld said, that the company turned them into a 30-second TV ad. He said.

"We knew there was something special there, and the backend metrics showed that purchase intent, brand awareness, all those things went up."

Twitter must be careful with its approach to advertising on Vine. The community on the platform is tight-knit and not likely to respond positively to ads forced into their streams. Instagram, another visual platform, faced a backlash when it introduced ads.

Mr. Lunenfield said.

"We're really focusing on building the product, the experience and the community first. Then we've got strong relationships with every advertiser to learn how to promote that through Twitter proper."

In conclusion, Twitter has no plans to convert Vine and Periscope into advertising platforms. Brands use the Twitter platform for engaging with its fans, and this is where promoted ads and videos will be placed.

Having said this, it is important to distinguish between Twitter's Vine app adoption by brands and individual Twitter users. By the third quarter 2013, Vine was the fastest growing mobile app in the world with 23.65 million users and grew at 403% during 2013. Instagram had 109.7 million users, but only grow 130% during 2013.

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Twitter does not publish Vine statistics, but I found that The Social Media Hat compiled the following Vine statistics taken from different sources.

200 Million - Number of Vine monthly active users (8/27/15)

31.7% - Monthly growth rate of Vine monthly active users (12/7/15)

14% - Vine's reach of total U.S. digital population (4/2/15)

100 Million - Number of people that watch Vine videos each month (8/20/14)

1.5 Billion - Number of Vine loops played daily (1/26/15)

1 Trillion - Number of Vine loops played annually (1/26/15)

28% - Percentage of Vine users 18-24 years of age (12/31/14)

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In a blog post dated October 29, 2015, I reported that Twitter had 320 million monthly active users during their Q3 2015 earnings conference call. User growth has stagnated and remains in low single digits on a quarter-to-quarter basis. Increasing user growth and engagement and making Twitter easier for everyone to use is the biggest challenge facing CEO Jack Dorsey. Video advertising has taken a foothold on Facebook, and this is widely accepted as the most effective means to reach consumers. You can expect that Twitter will follow suit, and that Vine and Periscope video ads will play a major role in their advertising strategy.

Courtesy of an article dated December 6, 2015 appearing in AdWeek, an article dated October 27, 2015 appearing in AdWeek, an article dated December 7, 2015 appearing in R/ECode, an article dated May 8, 2015 appearing in AdAge, and an article dated July 14, 2015 appearing in Business Insider

12/04/2015

We arranged to meet for the first time at a park, and when I got there, he was even cuter than in his pictures. Then he went running after a ball.

It was my first online date with a dog.

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Atlas, a sweet, cheerful two-year-old black Lab with his own Instagram, is a member of a new dog-sharing app called Bark'n'Borrow, which matches dog owners up with people like me, who wish they could own a dog but can't. (In my case, my lease doesn't allow pets.) Dogs get some extra attention, dog owners can get a free dogwalker or sitter, and dog lovers can play or cuddle with a charming new friend.

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It might be a natural step in the sharing economy: If we share our apartments and cars and power tools, does it also make sense to share our pets?

Liam Berkeley, the founder of Bark'n'Borrow says.

"I was contemplating rescuing a dog—I grew up with dogs—but I was working 12 or 13 hour days. My girlfriend at the time was still in school and had a job on the side. So as much as we were thinking of getting one, we knew it wasn't the best idea."

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But Berkeley started to meet neighbors with dogs. He says.

"I started talking with them, and I'd play with their dogs. I ended up saying, 'Hey, I go running a couple afternoons a week, and I'd love to take your dog for a run if possible.' They said yes, after getting to know me a little bit."

As he took the borrowed dogs out for hikes, he kept meeting other people who, like him, missed owning a dog of their own. And so Berkeley decided to put together a simple dog-matching service.

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He says.

"I thought, this is unfair that there's no medium between not owning a dog and committing to one for the next 16 years of your life. And why do dog owners pay someone to look after their dog when there are people like myself who would love to do it and not expect to get paid?"

He made up a few flyers, started talking to people on hikes, and realized that there was enough interest to build a website, and later an app. A year later, he's working full-time on the startup, with seven employees and a round of funding.

The app is simple: Each dog has a photo, some basic data like age, breed, how well trained it is, and how well it gets along with other dogs and children. The profiles also include keywords (Atlas is "curious,""affectionate," and "loyal," among other expected qualities for a dog). Dog lovers can reach out, and then go meet with an owner; if everyone gets along, they can arrange for dog walking or sitting later.

Of course, it takes some trust on the part of the owner. Sam Alter, Atlas's owner says.

"The big hurdle for me is, how do I know you're not going to steal the dog or hurt the dog? Or what happens if the dog gets hurt while it's in your care?"

Bark'n'Borrow says it vets each potential borrower, and Berkeley thinks it can work as long as everyone takes the time to get to know each other. He says.

"When I reached out to owners at first, they weren't hesitant at all. Maybe because I showed my passion and interest in their dog, got to know them. I wanted to build a platform that allowed people to do the same thing."

For now, dog owners and borrowers pay nothing (the app also connects professional dog walkers who do charge a fee, but the main service is free, at least for now). Alter says.

"I can pay $20 for a half hour with a dog walker, or I can find someone who just wants to do this because they love dogs."

Eventually, Berkeley plans to charge a small fee for borrowers as well. He says.

"I would have paid for this."

The fee will help cover insurance and customer support, and a portion of the profits will go to animal rescue. The service also plans to eventually partner with shelters to connect people with foster dogs.

It's a popular service so far. Alter says.

"I signed up two days ago, and I've already had 10 or 15 people reach out."

I'm hoping to borrow Atlas when Alter is out of town for a weekend, and experience a little temporary dog ownership. Berkeley says.

"Not being able to own a dog, after growing up with one, you miss something in life. There's just something about it."

COMMENTARY: According to Statista, in 2000 there were an estimated 68 million dogs were owned in the United States. By the end of 2012, the number of dogs living in U.S. households increased to 78.2 million. It is now estimated that there will be 77.8 million dogs in U.S. households by end of 2015.

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According to the American Pet Products Association, pet owners will spend an estimated $60.59 billion on their pets.

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The creators of Bark'N'Borrow obviously picked a huge industry for their app. Technology is impacting every industry and this app obviously fills a real need in the marketplace. Choosing the right pet, especially if you are not sure of the breed, or unfamiliar with the personality of that breed, is vitally important in making the right decision. Bark'N'Borrow provides the perfect solution to the product, allowing new pet owners an opportunity to 'try-out' the dog before they make a serious committment to buying that dog. I love this app and what it can do for existing and new pet owners.